Come Down to Me
by orangeiguanas4
Summary: There's no reason for Santana to be on a stage singing "Don't Rain On My Parade", except that she's determined to ruin every single thing in Rachel's life. That's exactly what she's doing. And Rachel knows in that moment that the one girl that she trusted is now her biggest enemy. Starts with 5x09 and veers off from canon beyond 5x10.
1. Chapter 1

Rachel has always known that she was born to be on the stage. Part of her knows it was a fluke that she landed Funny Girl in the first place, considering her lack of experience beyond community theater performance. Despite all of her auditions for Off-Broadway productions in New York since she moved here, the only role she had landed involved a nude scene in a student film. Rachel _knows_ she was born to play Fanny on a Broadway stage, but that doesn't ease any of her anxiety over auditions for her understudy.

The first few girls help soothe her insecurities-they're good actresses, but their vocal ranges are nowhere near the level they need to be to fill her shoes on any given night. She tries, again, to convince her director that she really doesn't need an understudy in the first place. And again, he refuses and reminds her about the business end of a production of this level-she may be the star, but she's rendered powerless next to the people putting money into bringing Funny Girl back to a prominent stage.

He reads the next name on the list and she's convinced that her heart actually stops beating. There's no way that Santana, her best friend AND roommate, would be auditioning to be her understudy. But then a voice rings out, loud and clear from the back of the theater and there's no mistaking it. Santana Lopez knows how to make an entrance.

It's nothing like the original, yet Santana completely owns it from the first note. Simply speaking, it's right up Santana's alley with its showy runs and faster tempo. As usual, Santana flirts with a simple glance towards Rupert, and he's practically salivating at how short Santana's dress is, and how it presses tightly against her thighs. Before Santana even hits the last note, Rachel knows, judging by the lead weight settling in her stomach, that Santana is going to be her understudy, even if she is completely wrong for the part.

After her director dismisses her for the day - they don't have rehearsals since they're casting the rest of the chorus members today as well - she stops by her dressing room. For a minute, it feels just like high school did. The Cheerios stomped all over her then and made her feel worthless day in and day out. Even when she accomplished something, like landing the lead in West Side Story, one of her friendships was always hurt in the process.

_This isn't high school_, she reminds herself. Santana is nothing more than an understudy to her role. They aren't splitting shows like they might if this was an amateur show. It's her dressing room with her name affixed prominently on the door. The gold star below it feels like so much more than the symbolic stickers that have been at the end of her name for ten years. It's a modest room - she hasn't really had a chance to personalize it yet - but it has a couch and a vanity just like she had always imagined. Santana will be squished into a dank space with all of the other understudies and background dancers. She's not a star, nor does Rachel ever plan on giving her a chance to be.

She knows she's acting like a complete diva these days, but the demands on her and the stakes on this show going off without a hitch are more pressure than Rachel has ever experienced. It seems like forever ago she was on the bottom rung of Cassandra July's dance class, and now her director is telling her that she needs to build her professional team. She's a nobody in the business, but somehow she's going to be on the cover of New York Magazine when the show debuts in a couple of months. Agencies keep calling offering to represent her or to get an early scoop that they can beat the big reporters to. Really, she doesn't know how anybody handles it without becoming an unbearable bitch because the curtain is still firmly closed and she's already overwhelmed.

Having Santana nipping at her heels for a chance to play Fanny is _definitely_ not going to help. Kurt tries to talk her off the ledge before Santana gets home that afternoon, but Rachel is inconsolable on the issue as it is. He doesn't seem to understand why it's such a big deal, but he's also not the one that got tortured by Santana and her friends for years. Sure, Kurt took a slushie or a dumpster dive once in a while from the football boys, but it was nothing compared to the emotional abuse Quinn, Santana, and Brittany put her through on a daily basis. The physical pain of a slushie was nothing compared to the giggles behind her back or the insults about her appearance that got thrown around every time she dared to meet their eyes.

Santana is talented. Truth be told, Rachel doesn't think Santana's quite as polished since she never really put time in with professional vocal coaches, but Santana has something unique that Rachel knows she can never match.

But that doesn't mean that she fits the part of Fanny.

And it definitely doesn't mean she deserves it more than Rachel.

Plus, Santana's talent doesn't make her betrayal okay.

The smirk that immediately appears on Santana's lips when she realizes Kurt and Rachel were talking about her just fuels Rachel's infuriation.

Rachel finally, _finally_ thought that she and Santana were friends that could count on one another, yet here she is, finding herself completely blindsided by her roommate who knows how much Fanny means to her. Rachel doesn't just play Fanny, she _is_ Fanny.

The insults start flying immediately - Rachel's never been one filter her true feelings. Santana may be able to sing the high notes and flirt enough with a director to leave an impression, but she doesn't look the part at all.

Yet, Rachel isn't Latina and she managed to pull off Maria in West Side Story just fine last year. She knows it's a weak attempt, throwing Santana's appearance into the argument, and it does nothing but egg Santana on.

Santana might not actually be from Lima Heights Adjacent, but she can cut a person down with her words while still maintaining all of the grace from her former Cheerio days. No matter what, Santana always has to have the last word in everything.

It's not enough that Santana showed up at auditions unannounced and sang Rachel's go-to audition song, but she has to make sure that she tears Rachel down as much as possible, leaving the little piece of confidence she has left in shreds.

Rachel breaks.

She turns and her palm meets Santana's cheek with as much force as her tired body can manage.

As soon as her hand begins tingling from the sensation of the slap, she regrets it. Kurt is staring at her like she's the biggest bitch in the world, but it's the look of mortification on Santana's face that makes her want to break on the spot.

But Santana's phone rings and she walks away to answer it.

Sure enough, Santana will be her understudy. And her worst enemy.

Deep down, she really does want to apologize. She is angry with Santana for encroaching on something that feels so distinctly hers, but she doesn't hate her. It's impossible to hate the one girl that makes her feel like she actually deserves to have friends. She hasn't forgotten the way that Santana held her and soothed her after she found out about the pregnancy test or how tightly Santana held her hand on the subway ride to the doctor's office the next morning.

She gets to rehearsal and is looking forward to the tiny bit of tranquility that her dressing room offers - it has a door unlike the majority of their Bushwick loft - and she really, really just needs a few minutes by herself.

Of course, Santana is standing at her vanity when she opens the door because it's like she knows exactly how to get under Rachel's skin so far that it makes Rachel want to tear herself apart just to make the pain and frustration stop.

For the second time in two days, she loses it on Santana, only this time Santana's comebacks feel half-hearted.

Rupert interrupts them and Rachel's worst nightmare comes true: the publicity for the show is now going to revolve around her connection to Santana instead of on her sheer talent as a young ingénue on the stage of her dreams.

God, as soon as the magazines and newspapers dig a little deeper and find out just how unfriendly they were to one another in the past, Rachel knows that she won't get to recreate herself in New York the way she had always hoped. New York was always supposed to be _her_ city, her escape into a better life where her past would stop haunting her. It was supposed to be the place where she proved to everybody that she was bigger than their small town minds and stupid insults.

Instead, she's going to have to relive it all just because Santana has decided that she needs to prove that she can play in the same league as Rachel.

They only have twenty minutes until they're due on stage for rehearsals, but Rachel can't stop the hot, stinging tears that pour down her cheeks. She sits on the couch and pulls her legs up into her chest until she's wrapped tightly around herself like it might actually keep her from completely falling apart. She focuses on her breathing, deep in through her nose, and releases it slowly from her mouth. The sobs cling to the back of her throat, wanting to erupt until exhaustion sets in and she can sleep, away from the world and away from Santana.

It doesn't happen.

One of the dancers knocks on the door fifteen minutes later and Rachel clears her throat before responding that she'll be there in a few minutes and sits down at the vanity to cover up the signs of vulnerability.

Of course one glance from Santana from across the stage tells Rachel that Santana knows exactly what she was doing in the dressing room and it makes her feel that much worse.

What Rachel really wants the most right now is a break from Santana. Instead, she finds that their schedules have become almost identical with Santana attending every rehearsal these days. Gunther puts them on the same shifts at the diner since it'll inevitably bring crowds in. The story of his two menial singing waitresses making it big together is a headline that he is willing to sell. These days it feels like everybody is using her to make a quick buck. Even Isabelle Wright, Kurt's boss at , has asked him if he thought Rachel and Santana would be interested in doing an exclusive shoot together and interview for the website. Rachel decides that she needs to find representation. She needs someone that will realize she's worth selling as a solo act, instead of as this fake heartfelt story with her ex-best friend understudy.

She wants just one morning where she's not fighting Santana for bathroom time in the loft. She wants one evening after a shift where she's able to call her dads and cry about how her dream is turning in a nightmare without having Santana around the loft, eavesdropping through her privacy curtain.

Rachel needs to move out since Santana is obviously not going to give in. The decision comes through yet another fight where Kurt refuses to take her side and protect her from Santana's selfish motives. As always, she's nothing but an over-the-top diva who cares more about herself than everybody else. Rachel sees the way Kurt looks at her with something that is nearly disgust as she storms into her room to pack her belongings.

The whole time Rachel is packing, she weighs her options. Her dads gave her an emergency credit card when she moved to New York, but she doesn't think they'd appreciate her charging a hotel room just so she can escape her roommates that obviously don't understand what this role means to her.

It's not like she really has any other friends in New York. Most of the people at NYADA never gave two shits about her, and she hasn't heard from a single one of them since she put in her leave of absence. Part of it she knows is jealousy; some of them had been at NYADA for longer than her, or came from families that moved to New York when they were toddlers to give them the best chance of making it big, and Rachel waltzed in and got what all of them wanted.

There's only one friend Rachel has made at the diner, but somehow she doesn't think that Dani will appreciate her trying to stay there when the whole reason she needs a place to stay is because Rachel is fighting with Dani's girlfriend. Really, she wishes that Santana would just agree to move out since at least there's someone else in this stupid city that actually cares about her.

That only leaves her with one viable option besides trying to find a homeless shelter, and she figures that her director won't appreciate that popping up in the tabloids before the show even reaches previews.

Elliott looks surprised to see her with luggage in tow, but it seems that Kurt already updated him with the basic jist of the ongoing drama. He takes her in even though his shoebox-of-a-studio apartment is hardly comfortable enough for one person, nevermind two. She knows it's because of her diva attitude that he quickly agrees to give up his bed for her, and he graciously makes up the couch for himself instead.

As soon as she's settled in - it's not like there's anywhere for her to unpack anyway - Elliott takes off to meet Kurt. They're scoping out bars for potential gigs for the band, though Rachel isn't sure what the point is since there's no chance that she and Santana are going to be working together more than necessary anytime soon. For the first time in weeks, Rachel is finally alone.

Being alone immediately covers her in a cloak of dread. She flips through the pictures on her phone and it's only a dozen or so back before she sees a copy of the one she tore up and threw at Santana only a few hours ago. It was rash - Rachel's diva temper has gotten the best of her on far too many occasions - though the look of despair Santana gave her as she walked in is one that is already haunting her.

Before she can stop it, she's overcome with gut wrenching sobs, her makeup leaving dark smears all over the pillowcase. She curls into a ball on the middle of Elliott's bed, which smells strongly of cheap cologne and hair gel.

Funny Girl was supposed to be the prize for having endured years of fighting through the bad times in her life. Even though her director was already mentioning her getting nominated for a Tony before her twentieth birthday, all Rachel cares about is how the magic of her dream coming true feels ruined. The picture of her and Santana, the only girl that she actually thought she was friends with, fades as the phone screen clicks off and she's left by herself without anybody to share her successes with.

It makes her miss Finn more than ever. She clutches at her side where his name is etched neatly on her skin as a constant reminder that he was the only person who ever really loved her. The pain of not being able to pick up the phone and hear his voice soothe her makes her stomach clench tightly for a minute and she grabs for the trashcan next to the bed, emptying the contents of her stomach into it. She doesn't feel any better and she tries to wipe at her face with a tissue, but the tears just fall harder. She gasps for breath, willing for all of her pain to wash away with the tears, but her chest just tightens uncomfortably like her own body is rebelling against her.

Her dad answers the phone on the third ring.

"There's my little Broadway starlet! I thought you were getting too famous to call your lame old dads!" he greets cheerfully, and she can hear pots clanking as he works on preparing dinner.

"Is that our favorite pumpkin?!" She hears her daddy's voice call through from the other room. "Leroy, I want to talk to her!"

The joy in their voices at getting to speak with her makes her start crying loud enough that her dad finally realizes that she has failed to even say hello since he picked up the phone.

"Rachel, sweetie, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"

She blows her nose and tries to compose herself enough to at least talk to her dad.

"I just th-thought that getting Fanny meant that everything else would be perfect," she wails through the phone, her tears continuing to soak her cheeks.

"You did a shoot for New York Magazine and you have that interview with coming up in a few weeks and I'm already trolling the blogs to get the early news on the show. All of it is positive. You're expected to be the next darling of Broadway. Everything is perfect, sweet pea. It's exactly what you always wanted."

"I don't have any friends," she states bluntly, and as soon as she says it, she knows it's the stone cold truth.

"Sweetie, that's not true," her dad tries to reassure. "Even though you didn't have the conventional teenage experiences that does not mean that there aren't people around that care about you. Kurt moved all the way to New York and wanted to be your roommate. Santana showed up on your doorstep. She wouldn't have done that if she didn't consider you a friend."

It's really no consolation considering the venom she and Santana have spat at one another these past couple of weeks. Santana has reminded her on multiple occasions that she's a horrible person who only cares about herself.

"Let me talk to her, Leroy," her daddy insists and she can hear the phone rattle as her dad passes it to him.

She sniffles into the phone as her daddy retrieves the phone from her dad. She can almost feel him worrying through the phone.

Her Daddy waits for her to speak; unlike Dad, he's the patient one. She gets her talkative nature from her Daddy.

She cries for a few minutes before she finally feels like she can breathe again and she swallows air in big gulps, letting her heart rate fall to a normal level.

"Tell me where it hurts," her daddy says softly on the other end. It makes her crack a small smile. He used to say it all the time when she was younger, whether it was for a skinned knee or hurt feelings.

"Why am I so abrasive that nobody can stand being friends with me?" she asks him, ignoring his question altogether. He knows exactly where it hurts this time.

"Because it's hard to transplant a star from the sky and make them fit in with normal people," he tells her seriously. "Rach, you're beyond talented and you're incredibly special and people don't understand the stress that puts you under."

"I'd give it all up to have one friend that actually cares enough to stick around," Rachel tells him, tears burning in her tired eyes again at the memory of Santana calling her awful.

Her daddy sighs on the other end of the line, obviously at a loss for words. She knows she's breaking their hearts - getting her on Broadway meant that her dads worked overtime to pay for expensive lessons and classes for her entire childhood to give her an edge. It meant that they spent all their time running her from extracurriculars every day, hardly ever getting a chance to sit down together as a family. They gave up everything for eighteen years to make sure that she could achieve even her most lofty aspirations, and now she's telling them that she doesn't even want it.

They stay on the line for a few more minutes and she listens to her dads breathe, the two of them hovering over the phone nervously. She knows how worried they are, but she knows she can't help that until she regains control over her own life. They can't save her from herself.

She makes an excuse to hang up and they don't fight with her on it. Instead, they remind her that they love her and assure her that it'll all work out just like they always do. She knows that they wholeheartedly believe that this is just one of her over-dramatic moments, not that she's truthfully miserable living out her dreams.

Maybe they're right. Her heart is telling her that they're wrong and that she should have never taken a role on Broadway this young in the first place. As much as she knows that her talent is worthy of the role, she's not prepared for everything else that comes with being the lead in a highly publicized revival.

For the first time in weeks, she finally looks over the list of agents and publicists and managers that Rupert gave her after he scheduled two interviews for her and Santana to do together. She needs representation. They may not be her friends, but they'll be people that are always on her side at least. Even if she has to pay them to do so.

She Googles the names of the people on the list and makes notes on each. They all have success stories plastered on their firms' pages, but a little digging gives her more dirt on the agents. She picks her top three and leaves messages on their answering machines to set up meetings.

Come Monday morning, she takes off right from rehearsal for her first meeting. Santana looks confused when she hops on the uptown train instead of heading downtown for their typical shift at the diner, but they don't speak as they part ways.

The office is fancy, with shiny tiled floors and plush, plum colored couches in the waiting room. The secretary checks her name on the list of appointments and gives her a warm smile before handing her some forms on a clipboard and asking her if she'd like a beverage.

A moment later, an intern delivers a steaming mug of green tea with honey. She looks older than Rachel, probably around a senior in college, but she eyes Rachel curiously as she passes over the mug. Rachel gives her a big, fake smile and thanks her for the tea before the girl scurries away into a back office again without so much as a word. It's odd, the way that even something so minor makes her feel like this life is anything but her own. She's used to the rolling eyes and looks of disdain from her peers.

As soon as she gives the secretary back the forms, a woman in a dark gray suit pops her head out from behind a frosted glass door. The woman looks severe and unwelcoming with her blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, though Rachel can't deny that she commands the presence of a room with no real effort. Rachel hops to her feet immediately and bounds across the room to where the woman stands in the doorway.

"Rachel Berry, young Broadway ingénue." It's a statement, not a question. Rachel knows that as much as she searched out her possible agents, the agents probably dug up twice as much information on her.

Rachel nods, the movement timid and shy, completely unlike herself.

"I'm Alison Napolitano. Please come in."

Rachel moves past Alison and into the office. The door clicks behind her and she slips into an armchair that sits in front of the large, dark wood desk. Alison moves behind her desk and the chair creaks beneath her when she leans forward to read the forms Rachel had filled out in the waiting room.

"Nineteen, from some cow town in Ohio, lasted barely more than a semester at NYADA before dropping out for the role as Fanny Brice on Broadway."

Alison seems completely unimpressed with Rachel's life. Rachel feels self-conscious by hearing it read to her. She's a nobody in this industry and Alison, along with every other agent in New York, will probably laugh her right out of their office.

Rachel sits up straighter in her chair, edging forward towards Alison's desk. She's not a shy little girl from Ohio anymore, no matter what has happened over the past few weeks. Her name will be on a marquee soon, regardless of what Alison Napolitano thinks of her talent.

"Look, I'm young and inexperienced. But I have a contract in a major production and I'm being scheduled for interviews and events all over New York to promote it. You can be ahead of the curve and take on a young girl with a promising future, or you can regret it down the line when I'm a household name."

It's typical Rachel Berry - blunt and unforgiving for her talent. She's a star, and Alison Napolitano would benefit from understanding that.

"Nobody in this office is doubting your talent, Ms. Berry," Alison says calmly, pulling the dark rimmed glasses from her face and depositing them onto her desk with a sigh. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're the best young actress that has ever had an opportunity to work with my firm, because that would be a blatant lie. You have no idea what this industry is like yet. Interviews and appearances with smaller news outlets is only the beginning. The show is still a few months from opening night. I've talked to your producer and I know his expectations for this show and your career. Any person that works with Broadway stars is well aware that you're looking for representation. There are people that will sit behind big oak desks and promise you that you'll be on a big screen in two years and winning an EGOT before you turn 25 just so that you give them a huge cut of your hard earned paycheck. I'm not the person that is going to sit here and stroke your ego to watch you fall apart when you can't attain those unrealistic goals for your career."

Rachel gapes at her. Alison is straightforward in a way that Rachel isn't used to. People have told her that she's going to fail. She's used to people hating her for her talent. But Alison isn't at all. Rachel thinks that Alison does actually believe that she's talented, but she's not in the business of padding young egos and giving false hope.

She has a list of questions in her purse to make sure that Alison is, in fact, the best person to represent her. However, her gut is telling her that she doesn't need that list to figure it out.

Alison starts talking about realistic goals and building a team with an agent, manager, and publicist and Rachel finds herself nodding repeatedly, though she's not sure that she absorbs anything except that Alison knows exactly what she needs, probably even more than she does herself.

A half an hour later, Alison is handing her a contract to look over and walks her back into the lobby. Rachel shakes her hand and tucks the folder under her arm as she leaves, her head spinning with all of the decisions she needs to make.

She would cook for Elliott, but she's useless in the kitchen, and they're both too broke to eat takeout every night, so she settles on making a fresh salad when she gets home, throws some in a Tupperware container for him to eat later, and eats on the couch while she reads over the paperwork that Alison gave her.

Technically she has a meeting with another agent tomorrow to figure out who the best fit for her is, but Alison's no-nonsense approach has drawn Rachel in more than she expected.

She calls the other agents and cancels her meetings before signing the forms for Alison. She refrains from adding the gold star-there's one on her dressing room door these days so there's no need for metaphors-but it still feels like an accomplishment nonetheless. She's a real, contracted Broadway actress who needs representation.

She could get used to this life.

It takes another week before she finds time to meet Kurt for lunch. Between meeting with her new team - on top of Alison, she's got a publicist and a manager now, both handpicked by Alison and approved by herself - and rehearsals and filling her schedule up with interviews and public appearances, Rachel hasn't had any time for her only remaining quasi-friend.

They meet at a café a couple of blocks from the theater since she has to be back for afternoon rehearsals soon anyway. She's glad to see him and she hugs him tightly, even though he's in his diner uniform and he smells like last night's greasy onion rings. He returns the gesture easily, like things are the same as they were a few weeks ago.

But things are nothing like they had been. Kurt is Santana's roommate. They probably watch reality shows together after shifts at the diner or the band rehearsals that she's never informed of anymore. Kurt probably gives Santana beauty tips - though it's not like she needs it - and they probably have matching nightly moisturizing routines by now.

Kurt is talking, but she's not focused and she shakes her head. He gives her a weird look and cocks an eyebrow at her as the waitress drops off their drinks.

"Rach?"

"Hmm?" She squeezes a lemon into her water and takes a sip, focusing on his gaze.

"I asked you how everything is going with the show. Santana says that your producer is really pushing this Lima story. It sounds like you two are going to have a bunch of press coming up for opening night."

Lead fills her stomach, pulling her down like a weight. Of course she knows about the scheduled interviews-her team has them all inputted on the shared Rachel Berry Google calendar that owns her life these days-but she's not looking forward to what kinds of things she's going to be asked about her life before New York.

Kurt isn't an ally these days, not since he pretty much sided with Santana in the fight that tore them apart.

So instead of confiding in him, she pastes on the calm smile that she's perfected. She may not be Quinn Fabray, but Rachel definitely knows how to act like everything is perfect.

It's a stilted conversation with Rachel only offering enough to placate Kurt's questions about what's going on with her life. Of course, Elliott has probably informed him already about the nightly phone calls to her fathers that have taken the place of roommate bonding. Beyond the show and her commitments in relation to it, Rachel has nothing else happening. There are no band gigs or movie nights, no outings for drinks with colleagues after a particularly hard rehearsal.

She's happy when the conversation turns to Kurt's life instead, and he starts rambling endlessly about Blaine's NYADA audition and wedding planning. She knows that Kurt is high maintenance and dramatic, but he's kidding himself if he thinks the situation is going to work out in his favor. However, she smiles at the right moments and offers him her wedding binder that is tucked into one of her boxes, and they get through the meal without any real hitch.

He walks back towards the theater with her and she doesn't miss the way that some of the backup dancers check him out as they smoke cigarettes by the side door. He kisses both of her cheeks and squeezes her shoulder lightly before walking away, his eyes already focused on his cell phone before he turns the corner.

She misses Kurt.

She misses Santana.

This is Funny Girl. This is what she's always wanted. Rachel Berry is meant to be Fanny Brice in the biggest revival on Broadway in the past decade.

As much as she wants her friends back, it's not worth giving up the role she was born to play.

**Author's Note: I don't plan to stick with canon for the entire story. This story evolved from the beginning of the Pezberry feud, but was planned out right after 5x10, so don't expect any real canonical representation beyond that point. I want to explore what could have happened as a result of Santana auditioning for ****Funny Girl**** and that's the angle that the entirety of this story is going to take.**

**I would be nothing without my incredible beta, quasi-suspect. If you're not reading her story, ****I'll Be Your Mirror**** (or its predecessor), then you really should be. She's amazing.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for all the lovely comments I got on the first chapter. Some people asked if this story will be completely in Rachel's point of view. The short answer is that it won't, but it also won't be an even split between Rachel and Santana's viewpoint either.**

**Much thanks to my lovely beta, quasisuspect, for taking time out of studying for the bar exam to help me with this chapter.**

Rachel is grateful that the first interview is for a magazine. The idea of being on camera with Santana sitting next to her in a leather jacket with her hair wavy and her makeup being the perfect shade of smoky gray to pull out the deep brown of her eyes makes Rachel feel completely inferior.

Of course, Kenzie, her manager, has made sure she was prepared as well, but she's anything but comfortable in the five inch heels and skintight jeans that she literally had to wrangle herself into. She knows the look is not effortless on her, not in the way that everything seems to be on Santana.

She sits up straight as they wait for Michael Dempsey, the reporter from PlayBill that is supposed to be meeting them for lunch. Santana taps away at her cell phone, ignoring Rachel sitting beside her completely.

Finally, a man in dark rimmed glasses and a gray suit weaves through the restaurant tables and drops his messenger bag next to the table before turning to greet them. Rachel stands up to shake his hand enthusiastically and he smiles widely at her before turning to Santana. Santana barely looks up from her phone and it takes all the strength Rachel has to not kick her under the table to force her to get her ass into gear.

They order food - Rachel's team reminded her about thirty times to order the least messy salad possible - and make small talk as they wait for their food to arrive. Michael is bubbly and Rachel has a feeling that she could talk about old Broadway shows with him for hours without getting bored. Santana looks unamused in general, but Rachel is glad to see that she at least tucked her phone into her purse for the time being.

As soon as the waiter drops off their plates, Rachel can feel the change in Michael's demeanor, from warm and friendly to serious reporter. Knots tie themselves tight in the pit of her stomach, and the idea of even taking one bite of her food makes her sick. She steals glances at Santana, who is picking at her own salad, taking tiny, polite bites in between sips of her water.

"So you two both went to the same high school, starred in the same glee club, and then moved in together when you headed out here?" Michael asks casually, though Rachel is acutely aware of the recorder he's placed on the table next to his untouched food.

Rachel feels the burn of Santana's eyes on the side of her head, obviously hoping that Rachel will field the question for both of them. Santana is her understudy. The only reason she's even at this meeting is that Rupert thinks it would be good press for the show as a whole to have this unique backstory. She's stuck pretending that they made it here together, not that Santana waltzed into her dream and has been sticking to her like an unwanted barnacle ever since she showed up unannounced at the door of the loft.

She swallows her bite of salad and clears her throat before answering.

"We did go to high school together back in Ohio," Rachel confirms, forcing herself to stick to answering the questions directly. With a little digging, Michael could find out everything about their murky past, but Rachel is willing to answer honestly without giving too much away. "We were in the same glee club for the majority of high school, though Santana left to form an all-girls group during our senior year. When they lost to us at Sectionals, we welcomed their members to join forces with our club again and we were able to come to a compromise that allowed us to work together and win Nationals."

Michael hums under his breath for a minute, jotting some notes down onto a yellow legal notepad.

"How did you both end up in New York?" he follows up, pen ready in his right hand as he grabs a quick bite of his food with his left one.

Rachel pauses, giving Santana an opportunity to answer. She knows how she got here; it had always been her plan. But why was Santana here when Los Angeles would have given her more opportunities for chasing fame?

"Well, I can answer for myself at least," Rachel finally says, her cheeks burning under Santana's unwavering gaze. "I always knew that New York was where I was meant to end up since the first time my dads brought me here to visit when I was in middle school. I looked into acting schools, and NYADA ended up being the fit that I had always imagined. My audition process was rocky, but ultimately I got my acceptance letter and I moved out here to pursue my education and career."

The ball is in Santana's court now; Rachel isn't going to answer for her on how she ended up here when it isn't something Santana has ever bothered telling her about in the first place.

Michael looks pointedly at Santana, who takes her time chewing and takes a large gulp of her water before she even looks at him.

"For me, coming to New York was just for the adventure. I actually went to college for a semester on a full cheerleading scholarship, but life on a in Kentucky just wasn't working for me. So I packed up and left. I had liked New York when we came for Nationals a couple of years ago, so I hopped on the train and started a new life."

This seems to pique Michael's interest. Rachel's story is cookie cutter: a young girl from a small town with huge Broadway dreams. Santana is different than what he's used to and it makes Rachel envious for a moment that she isn't more unique.

"It's not the first time we've heard of someone moving to New York to take a chance on making it big with no real backup plan. Did you have anything drawing you to New York beyond having visited once in high school?"

Rachel can see that he's fishing for an epic friendship story, of how Santana knew that she could team up with Rachel and they could conquer the world together. Telling him that would be a complete lie. Rachel knows that the only reason Santana ever moved in with her and Kurt was purely out of convenience due to her impromptu move to the city. She wants this interview to go well, but not at the stake of her being a liar marring her budding reputation.

"Knowing Berry, er, Rachel, and our other roommate, Kurt, definitely helped," Santana says, obviously trying to appease him without going too deeply into the truth. Her eyes flit to meet Rachel's, almost like she's hoping for approval. Rachel looks away and pushes some lettuce around on her dish.

"Rumor has it that your other roommate, Kurt, is also a student at NYADA. Is that right?"

"Yes, Kurt and I both applied during our senior year, and Ms. Tibideaux decided to take him after letting him perform at the NYADA Winter Showcase in December. To be honest, he really deserved a spot. His original audition was breathtaking."

"And why did you not apply to NYADA as well, Ms. Lopez?" Michael questions, looking like he's excited to dive deeper into Santana's past.

Santana bites her lip for a moment and Rachel doesn't miss the nervous way that her fingers play with the edge of the napkin on her lap.

"Musical theater isn't something I dreamed about from birth. Honestly, until we performed West Side Story during senior year, I had never cared about it at all. But I loved playing Anita in that production and I figured that auditioning for something like Funny Girl would be worth a shot. Before that, the stage had always kind of belonged to Rachel and Kurt. There was no chance that I was going to get in ahead of either of them."

"How does it feel to be playing the understudy to a girl that you admit overshadowed you all through high school as well?"

Rachel internally cringes at Michael's offhand question. Nothing sets Santana off faster than being compared to someone else's talent.

"Well, Michael, I don't think I've ever lived in Rachel's shadow. We have always had very different goals and interests. I was a Nationally ranked cheerleader for the entirety of my high school experience. Glee club was something fun that I did on the side as a break from my athletic pursuits. For Rachel, glee club was pretty much her entire existence. So yeah, maybe I'm performing under her in this production, but I got here because I'm talented and I have potential to grow in an industry that I never even considered as a career option until I moved to New York."

Rachel's jaw nearly drops at how poised Santana remains through her entire response and Michael is eating it up. Santana is this underdog story here. Rachel wouldn't be surprised if this article turns into something about Santana working her way up the ranks into stardom, having come from no musical theater background or training.

It's unfair, but as she's read these magazines for years, Rachel knows that being different sells copies. And she isn't any different than most people starring on Broadway shows these days.

The questions turn towards the production then, and Santana sits back as Rachel rambles on, promoting the show just as she was trained to do. She feels like a deflated balloon, but she maintains her best smile and tries to sound bubbly with excitement over every question he shoots at her.

Finally, the bill is paid and he shakes both of their hands, and slips each of them a business card before he leaves them standing next to one another on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant.

"See you at rehearsal, Berry," Santana comments, her eyes already glued back to her phone as she walks away, leaving Rachel standing there by herself.

She should be grateful that the interview went off without a hitch. The horrible memories of high school with Santana could have easily been dragged out over lunch, leaving their history painted in the print of a publication. In the grand scheme of things, she knows that the interview was successful and that Rupert will be pleased enough with the results. It's her job to keep everybody happy, and so far she's managed to do that.

Yet her heart feels heavy in her chest. Santana basically admitted in that interview that this role isn't even her dream, yet Michael fawned over her like she was something they haven't seen in a lifetime. Performing in Funny Girl is something Rachel has dreamed of since she was three years old. Santana probably didn't even know what the show was about until she was handed her official script a few weeks ago.

She still has over an hour until they're due at rehearsal, but she heads for the theater anyway, figuring that she can at least bask in the quietness of her dressing room until their call time.

Santana is nowhere to be seen when she arrives, and Rachel quickly closes herself in her dressing room before anybody can disturb her. Her feet ache from walking in heels for so many blocks, but it's a relief to yank off the jeans and swap them for yoga pants and an off-the-shoulder NYADA sweatshirt.

Rachel collapses back onto the couch and concentrates on her breathing, counting her breaths until the tightness in her chest starts to subside, only to be left with the rhythm of her thudding heart.

A knock on the dressing room door pulls her out of her dazed state and she bolts upright and runs a hand through her hair before calling for the person to enter. Paolo, the male lead playing Nick Arnstein, is standing there, looking unamused to be performing the task of fetching her when it could have easily been done by a chorus member.

"Uh, hi," she mumbles, yanking her hair up into a quick ponytail and straightening her sweatshirt as she scans the room for her sneakers.

"Rupert wants to go through some of our scenes today rather than work on the choreography. Find Santana too, he wants to run it through with both of you at once so we can move on."

With that, Paolo disappears again, leaving the dressing room door wide open.

Rachel hasn't missed the way that Paolo's eyes appreciate Santana's figure every time she walks out onto the stage. Rachel might look like Fanny, but Santana looks like every guy's wet dream.

She begrudgingly ties her sneakers and goes off in search of Santana in the wings of the stage. Rachel finds her sitting with a few of the background dancers, laughing happily. Most of them ignore her presence as she walks up to their little circle, but Santana's eyes meet hers dead on.

"We're running lines with Paolo today instead of doing choreography," Rachel tells her simply, willing her cheeks to not turn red over feeling the other girls eying her up. She's sure that they're wondering how this teenage girl could be the lead role with Paolo in the first place and it takes all of her focus to keep her back straight under their judgmental gaze.

Santana gives her new friends a simple goodbye and pops up from her spot on the floor before tailing Rachel to meet up with Paolo.

Rachel tries to not be jealous. Hanging out with chorus members might be fun, but everybody in this industry is cutthroat. Santana doesn't need to keep her distance; in reality her role really isn't any more important than those girls' are.

Rachel has everything to lose. So while it sucks to realize that she's not particularly cared for by the cast, she also tries to keep her eye on the prize.

Paolo is standing in the middle of the stage with Rupert as the girls approach, jeans slung low on his hips with his hands buried in his pockets. He looks every bit as seasoned as he did when Rachel did her chemistry read with him for the part, and so far they haven't spent much time rehearsing together at all.

Of course, Rachel has all of her lines memorized - it's a skill that she prides herself greatly on - but she notices Paolo's script is tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, corners dog-eared and pages covered in highlighting and pencil marks.

Santana's script still looks pretty much brand new as she rolls it between her hands as she waits. Rachel thinks of her own copy, which is lying on the vanity in her dressing room, looking worse for wear than Paolo's copy.

Fortunately, Rupert picks a scene that she knows inside and out and he calls her to her mark beside Paolo, leaving Santana to stand awkwardly on the edge of the stage. She catches a quick glimpse of Santana thumbing through her script, looking for the current scene before Paolo steps in front of her view and says his first line.

Paolo may be older and more distinguished in the industry, but Rachel can't deny that they have good chemistry. Rehearsing with him comes easily and she delivers line after line, playing off his little gestures.

Rupert seems pleased after only a few run throughs and tells them to take a five minute break before Santana takes her turn. Paolo's understudy, a dark, broody guy in his 30s, slouches in a seat at the front of the theater, mumbling lines under his breath as he reads his script. She thinks about going to sit next to him, but she doesn't recall his name, so she chooses instead to grab a bottle of water and takes a seat closer to Rupert instead.

Santana looks nervous, Rachel observes, as she heads towards the middle of the stage. Rachel focuses on her little ticks, making mental notes to pay attention to her own gestures in her next run through. Paolo runs a hand through his hair and waits patiently for Santana to be ready.

On Rupert's cue, Paolo delivers his first line effortlessly, and he attempts to look down into Santana's eyes, but she's staring right past him, obviously trying to remember her own line. She fumbles a couple of words, but recovers well, allowing Paolo to continue without starting over. It's not enough that most audiences would realize, but Rachel can't help but feel happy that Santana isn't going to be able to walk right past her into the leading role without a struggle.

Santana's turn takes nearly double the amount of time that Rachel's did, between repeating scenes for screwing up lines and Rupert calling out directions to help her posture, her delivery, and her basic approach to Paolo as a love interest. Paolo seems frustrated at being forced to waste his time training newbies, and finally Rupert releases him for the day, allowing his understudy to step in instead.

Rachel leaves rehearsals on a bit of a high. For the first time since Santana joined the production, Rachel isn't worried about losing her spot to her high school tormentor, and that makes everything feel minutely better, if only for an evening.

The night of happiness quickly turns into a pity party when Rachel gets home to see that Elliott is missing once again. She has a bottle of red wine and her leftovers from lunch, which turns into a one person feast on the coffee table.

She pulls up her email on her phone as she eats, and notices a list of possible events with links to her Google calendar that her publicist and manager have added. Some of them are small affairs, like mall appearances and meet and greets with Funny Girl fan clubs, but others are major interviews that Rupert had mentioned to her.

Her days are filling up faster than she can protest and she notices overlaps with her diner hours on pretty much every weekend from now until the show opens. Even if Alison and her team aren't saying it outright, the message is obvious. If she's going to be a star, she needs to leave the safety net of a menial weekly paycheck behind.

Rachel's a professional, so although it's just a job at a touristy diner in Midtown, she still makes the trek with her uniform newly dry cleaned in order to quit.

Gunther doesn't seem surprised that she's leaving - it was assumed that she would be doing so when the show started anyway - but he seems confused about her big speech about the opportunities this position offered her as he accepts the uniform wrapped in plastic.

It hurts a little to walk out of that back office and through the diner as the girls set up for the lunch rush. The diner was the place that she found out that she would be playing Fanny Brice. It's where her friendship with Santana really blossomed. At this point, it's the only real tie she has to Kurt and Dani since she doesn't see them for band rehearsals or social outings these days.

None of them say goodbye to her as she heads back out onto the street, forcing herself to not glance back.

It's a Sunday and she has no commitments for the day - it's the first time in weeks - so rather than rushing back to the subway for her next stop, she enjoys the bustle of people through midtown and tries to remember the magic that made her fall in love with New York in the first place.

Two blocks into walking around, she realizes that midtown is probably not the place to find magic. There are people standing around in filthy Elmo costumes on every corner, men keep trying to convince her to ride on sightseeing buses, and there's nothing to enjoy besides the hordes of overwhelmed tourists with their cameras and stupidly large backpacks.

She begins to walk away from the crowds, people-watching as she goes. It's without conscious thought that she ends up walking uptown until she's staring at the face of a green witch hanging above the Gershwin Theatre.

Her Broadway dreams had planted roots in her heart way before she snuck onto the stage inside this building with Kurt during their junior year of high school. She still remembers watching YouTube clips of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth belting out the songs in the original production, trying to match them note-for-note like she could one day fill their shoes.

Broadway had felt like a far off dream on that trip. She never expected that less than three years later, she would be on her own stage with her name lighting up the marquee. That dream life always came with an epic romance and friends that are sitting in the front row on opening night. She knows her dads will be there and that they'll make sure that she has a giant bouquet of flowers on her dressing room vanity. Mr. Schue might even make the trip, seemingly out of obligation to his glee club prodigy. But somehow, it still feels like a letdown that besides Kurt, none of the people she always imagined being there will be in the audience when the curtain comes up for the first time.

Rachel walks into the theater and heads straight for the ticket booth. It's a show that she had made a point of seeing within her first month of living in New York, even though she had already seen it with her dads the first time they visited New York. At the time, Kurt still wasn't living here and Cassandra July was making her cry herself to sleep pretty much every night. Broadway was the only thing Rachel had that made her feel like she was supposed to be here following what still seemed like a pipe dream.

She hadn't felt the awe that had accompanied seeing her first show with her dads when she was a kid. Over the years, it had grown into appreciation more than fascination. These days, shows come with mental notes of improvements and noticing missed cues or wrong steps. The simple joy of the music and the storyline is buried beneath her critical analysis, only strengthened by classes at NYADA and spending day after day in rehearsals with people that point out everybody's mistakes.

Broadway is no longer her source of entertainment. It's her professional career.

The lady at the ticket booth gives her a sad smile, like buying a single ticket for tonight's show is something to feel sorry about. Rachel figures that the woman believes her to be a tourist, here looking for the magic that New York has always promised her. And for the day, Rachel wants to be that person, so far removed from her daily life in the ever-growing spotlight.

Rachel tucks the ticket into her bag before she heads back out onto the street to kill a few hours.

Maybe reading a book while sitting in Bryant Park isn't some fabulous outing, but she sips at her soy latte from under the shade of the umbrella of the table. People walk by paying her no mind and it's a blissful afternoon of feeling like she can just be a normal person without an agent running her life and a former best friend trying to steal her job. It's a perfectly mundane afternoon and she basks in the peacefulness of it.

The giddy excitement grows as the hours creep by until she can't help but stick her earbuds in to listen to Idina belt some of her favorite songs in the world as she walks back uptown towards the theatre. She moves at the pace of the businessmen, slipping between the tourists on the sidewalk. It's easy to fall into the flow of New York, and it makes her comfortable to know that she can disappear into the crowd and just be another passing face in a throng of people.

The usher takes her ticket as he scans the barcode, reminding her to enjoy the show before directing her up the stairs into the theatre. Rachel knows that it's something he says to every person after he scans their ticket, but she takes it as a reminder that this isn't an assignment. She can just sit back and appreciate the performances without being compelled to critique it.

Her seat isn't the best in the house by any means, but it's good enough that she smiles as she sits down, her eyes scanning the intricate props lining the stage's boundaries. A family settles in beside her as she flips through her PlayBill, reading the bios of the cast. The father looks a little grumpy at being dragged to a show, but Rachel realizes that it'll be worth it as soon as he sees the looks of joy on the faces of his two little girls. The mother sits herself down next to Rachel, placing the girls, who Rachel guesses are about eight and ten, between her and her husband.

The two girls are chatting excitedly, pointing at the set and filling with wonder about all that is to come.

"_Rachel, sweetie, the people behind you aren't going to be able to see if you keep bouncing in your seat."_

_The man behind them chuckles as her dad places his hand on her thigh to try and calm her jittery body. She grips at her PlayBill, having already read it cover to cover, and checks her watch obsessively, waiting to hear the first notes ring out from the orchestra._

_She knows the entire score, having listened to the original soundtrack so many times that her cd was actually wearing out. She hums the opening notes and props herself up on her knees to get a better view of the stage over the woman in front of her._

"_Sorry, it's her first time in New York and she's been obsessed with Broadway since she was three."_

_The man behind them laughs again, but it doesn't deter Rachel from her sheer excitement, even though she knows the man is laughing at her._

"_Well, it would have been even better if we could have came for my birthday before Idina Menzel left the show," Rachel reminds her fathers, still upset that she missed her chance to see Idina play Elphaba live._

_But it's hard to be upset when the orchestra finally starts playing and she realizes that it's so much better in this huge acoustically-sound theatre, rather than the tinny sound from her boombox ricocheting off of the tile in her bathroom. _

_She tries to settle in her seat, her heart pounding in anticipation. The stage fills with the chorus members for the opening number and she's mesmerized, glued to the spot as she tries to take it all in at once. She misses the look her dads share over her head as Glinda descends from the rafters, but it's one of joy at making their little girl's dream come true._

As soon as the show begins, the girls settle in, the younger one snuggling into her mother's shoulder affectionately. Rachel misses most of the opening number as she watches them, their faces alight with wonder at what's to come.

At intermission, the father takes off to buy them some refreshments and the girls start asking a million questions about the show. The mother seems overwhelmed as she tries to Google the answers for her curious children as fast as they're asking them.

"May I?" Rachel pops in after one of the girls asks if Elphaba is really a wicked witch.

The woman sighs in relief and nods gratefully at her.

With that, Rachel launches into the tale of Glinda and Elphaba's friendship and how it's not a story about good and evil as much as it is about the journey that they both take. The two little girls hang onto her every word, every once in a while turning to make sure that their mom is listening to the story too. Rachel eats it up, happy to educate them on something that she has loved so dearly since she was their age.

The mom mouths "thank you" at her as the curtain comes up again for Act II and Rachel smiles at her graciously before turning her attention back to the stage.

At the end of the show, Rachel waits for the theatre to clear out, but the family lingers next to her as people start making their way down the aisle.

"Thanks so much for answering the girls' questions," the mom says again, patting the younger girl's head. "We just moved to New York and they've never seen a real Broadway show before."

"Well, I hope you liked it!" she says to the girls, who both nearly squeal with their happiness. "I'm actually going to be starring in the revival of Funny Girl that opens in a few weeks," Rachel admits.

The woman's eyes go wide at the fact that she's spent the last two hours sitting next to a Broadway star.

"I'd love if you and the girls would come see it at some point," she tells the mom, and the girls squeal again at the idea of seeing another show so soon. Rachel rifles through her bag for an old receipt and a pen. She scribbles her name and number on the back of it. "Call me and I'll make sure that there are tickets left at the box office for you. It wasn't that long ago that I was sitting here for the first time and it's where my dreams began too."

The mother hugs her in gratification and the girls thank her a million times before she finally ducks out of the theatre.

She can be that inspiration for little girls that she once craved so desperately in her own life. She wants the show to be a hit - a successful show means accolades and bigger contracts, after all - but more than that she wants to give those girls someone to look up to, someone to aspire to be when they grow up.

Tomorrow is a day filled with fifteen hours of rehearsal and a lunch meeting with her PR team. These days of blissful peace are going to be few and far between from now on, but she's ready for it. Because when she does have them, she knows there's always a place for her in an audience, a place where she can remember why it's always worth busting her ass day after day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Rachel's POV**

She probably wouldn't have agreed to go Kurt's gig now that she and Santana are officially kicked out of the band, but he looks so pleased with landing them a prime spot in the Friday night lineup, that she knows she can't let him down. Of course, Santana agrees to go as well, though that makes more sense since her girlfriend is still actually in the band.

Rachel spends more time than usual in front of a mirror that evening - thankfully Elliott had to leave early to set up so they're not vying for bathroom time - in an attempt to recreate the look that her new stylist keeps her in for public appearances. Of course, she's nowhere near the same skill level, so she ends up with makeup that comes off as barely passable by her standards.

The bar is moderately crowded when Rachel gets there and she finds a seat with a decent view of the small stage. She's really early - if there's one thing that she learned from Cassandra July, it's that on time is too late - so she's got her own space at a table.

There's hardly an empty seat in the place by the time Kurt's set is scheduled to begin, and the volume has steadily increased over the past hour as people began drinking. Rachel keeps an eye on her glass of water - the bartender looked at her with a cocked eyebrow when she ordered it, but she can't risk damage to her vocal chords this close to opening night - as everybody else sucks down beers and overpriced pink martinis.

Five minutes beyond when the set should have started, Santana finally wanders in. Immediately Rachel feels her chest tighten at the sight of her; Santana obviously chose looking flawless over being on time. Her outfit is easily one of the sexiest things Rachel has ever seen on someone who isn't actually a professional model and she struggles to avoid staring at every curve, wondering how Santana manages to pull it off.

Instead, she launches into a speech she had prepared in her head about acting like friends for the sake of Kurt. It comes out harsher than she intends it, though it's easy to ignore Santana reminding her that she'd easily win in a fight - Rachel doesn't doubt it's true as she's always been non-violent whereas Santana likes a good excuse to lash out - and she bites her lip to stop herself from continuing.

To her surprise, Santana agrees that they should be civil, if only for tonight. Rachel figures it has something to do with Dani; Santana will never admit how whipped she is in her relationships, but she knows that Santana would play nice for the sake of her girlfriend's gig, especially because it's also for Kurt. Santana is selfish when it comes to a lot of things, but she does have a tendency to bend over backwards for people she cares about.

Their friends appear on stage only a moment after Santana's arrival, and Santana plops down on a free stool at Rachel's table without invitation. The group looks kind of ridiculous in their matching suits, though Rachel would never tell them that. Kurt thrives on making fashion decisions, even if most people find his choices to be a little outrageous.

He seems nervous for the front man of a band; as much as he loves to perform, he always seems to have a harder time being himself under a spotlight. Rachel feels a pang of guilt shoot through her stomach when Kurt comments on the fact that the band has reduced from Pamela Lansbury down to a trio, and he avoids catching her eye as he addresses the crowd. However, Santana casts her a sidelong glance, as though she's feeling the same way about their fight tearing apart the band.

It's not like Rachel really has time these days to commit to getting a small band full of overzealous musical theater kids and wannabe rock stars off the ground. If nothing else, being part of Pamela Lansbury was more about feeling included than actually making music that would get them into the spotlight some day. It was selfish of her, she knows that. Elliott and Dani - and even her friends - would kill for the band to just land a gig where they were actually being paid to perform. For them, it was always more about making it big than it was about having fun and enjoying being teenagers for just a little bit longer.

But band rehearsals were a much needed break from NYADA's high performance standards and auditioning for every role that popped up anywhere in the tri-state area. Even when she landed Funny Girl, hanging out and rehearsing with the band was a sanctuary away from a cranky director and a jaded, veteran co-star.

Kurt, Dani, and Elliott look like they're having the time of their life on the tiny stage. The crowd is into it and sing along with the chorus enthusiastically. Santana sits with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, though her foot is tapping against the leg of her bar stool like she can't help but enjoy the performance. Rachel realizes that it's probably not the first time that Santana has heard this; they tend to rehearse in the loft in the evenings and Santana is still living there. Another pang of guilt courses through her at the realization. She's always missing out now that she doesn't see them on a regular basis.

One Three Hill takes a short break after a few songs and Rachel heads to the bar for a drink, vocal chords be damned. A glass of wine will at least take the edge off of her emotions enough that she's hoping she can actually enjoy the second half of the performance.

When she gets back to the table, Santana is missing. She scans the crowd by the bar and the bathroom, but doesn't see Santana's long hair or incredibly short skirt in either place.

It's a bit of shock when she finally sees Santana. Her attention is brought back to the stage by someone clearing their throat into the microphone. Dani is standing there with her guitar and she runs a hand through her hair as she waits for the crowd to settle a little. Santana is sitting on a wooden stool next to Dani, looking nervous.

"I have a song that I've been working on with my beautiful girlfriend," Dani announces into the mic and the crowd cheers loudly.

Rachel's stomach sinks. Both she and Santana were kicked out of the band over their fight, yet Santana is on stage ready to perform like she never left the group in the first place.

Rachel misses most of the song, though it's acoustic and it's an original composition of Dani's that Rachel vaguely remembers hearing her strum on occasion when Rachel was still living at the loft. Santana is holding the other mic and Kurt and Elliott hang on the back of the stage, giving the girls their moment.

Santana is looking at Dani the entire time. She hardly even glances out at the crowd as she harmonizes with Dani.

Rachel slips off of her stool, leaving her barely touched wine on the table and heads for the door, the tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. She makes it outside onto the sidewalk, but the cool evening air doesn't make it any easier to breathe.

She's the outsider.

Santana gets fucking everything: the apartment, their friends, Funny Girl, and the band.

New York was supposed to be Rachel's; it was supposed to be different.

She manages to hold back the tears until she locks herself into Elliott's apartment - she's been here for weeks but she still doesn't consider it hers at all. That fact just makes her cry harder and she can feel her mascara running in ugly, black streaks down her cheeks.

It's too late to bother her fathers; they've been asleep for hours at this point. She forces herself to change into pajamas and she collapses onto the bed without bothering to wash her face or brush her teeth. She hugs her knees to her chest and holds them there, her body shaking with the force of her sobs.

This pain in her chest has become so familiar, like it has found a home there and doesn't plan on leaving. That fact alone makes her angry because she knows she's a prisoner to this feeling, that she can't escape this constant spiral of grief when she has to keep seeing Santana every day.

~!~!~!~

Rachel can't remember the last time she did something that wasn't recorded on a calendar. Her phone buzzes at all hours with updates to that calendar and she follows the schedule that everybody else lays out for her day after day. Sometimes she likes the crazy routine, running from rehearsals to meet with her team to prep for an interview. Having someone else running her life makes it easy to lose herself in the comfort of routine, and that gives her less time to focus on the fact that if she had free time, she would have nobody to spend it with anyway.

Rehearsals are still taking up the bulk of her time, with the opening of the show creeping up on them so fast. However, even outside of rehearsal time, she still ends up being with Santana more often than not. Rupert loves the press the show has been getting from charming little Rachel Berry and sassy Santana Lopez. Together, they're a dream team, despite the fact that these interviews really just show how great they are as actresses. They act like best friends, they joke around and play off of one another. But as soon as the camera or recorder disappears, they go back to radio silence, splitting their separate ways as quickly as possible.

To be honest, Rachel has learned to like the interviews she does with Santana way more than the ones that she does with other members of the cast. Paolo flirts with any women in the area and relies on his reputation in the industry to carry him through public appearances without putting any real effort into selling the show. Santana, on the other hand, is so natural at making people fall in love with her that it ends up helping Rachel reputation too. They're a united front when it comes to interviews, even if that's the only time that they tolerate one another's presence these days.

It isn't the most exciting thing, but being fake with Santana is still a step up from the tension-filled silences that surround them the rest of the time. Sometimes she can forget that they hate one another in those moments as interviewers question them and inquire about how they ended up on the same Broadway stage after leaving the same tiny midwestern town. It's a process they have down pat, each of them interjecting with slightly new stories to give different magazines and blogs a fresh perspective on their so-called spectacular friendship.

But it's also exhausting, pretending like it doesn't bother her that Santana takes up fifty percent of her interview time, even though she's nothing but an understudy. It's all that Rachel can do to remind herself that once the curtain opens on the show, Santana will be sitting in a back dressing room with nothing to do but pray that Rachel sprains her ankle so that she can show her face on stage.

**Santana's POV**

When Santana auditioned for Funny Girl, she had no real understanding what kind of commitment it would be. But she's here, unwilling to quit or back down because that would be like admitting defeat to Rachel Berry. She also never figured as the understudy that she would need to make so many public appearances. To the actual production, she's barely more than a nobody choir member. Unless Rachel miraculously eats something she's allergic to and stops breathing, there's no chance in hell that Santana will actually get to perform as Fanny in the show's entire run.

Instead, she's hardly even getting paid to be in rehearsals for easily ten hours a day. There's a small bonus for interviews, thrown to her by Rupert who was desperate to broadcast the fairytale story of she and Rachel's climb to Broadway fame. Still, it wasn't enough to pay the bills, and she had to pick up diner shifts in any free time she had. To be honest, she can't remember the last time she got more than three hours of sleep, since the only diner shift that really fit into her schedule was 11pm to 5am.

The place was open 24 hours these days, but Santana's shift was usually incredibly slow. The tips were meager at best, but she was guaranteed a hot meal that she didn't have to cook and an unlimited supply of coffee to get through it.

There was no break and she was beyond the point of exhaustion.

Somehow, though, Rachel still managed to be perky and looking well rested every single morning. Santana knew she had quit working at the diner - her paycheck from Funny Girl was definitely a lot nicer than Santana's, plus her fathers helped her out - but she knew that Rachel also stayed late at rehearsals to practice a million more times than was necessary. Everybody already knew that her performance on opening night was going to be impeccable.

It irked Santana how Rachel managed to keep it all together. Even at early rehearsals, Rachel was always freshly showered, undoubtedly after a good workout on her elliptical. The rest of them chugged coffee in the wings until they were torn away from their warm ups by Rupert's booming call. It always made Santana scowl and she'd Rachel's eyes might look a little red, but in general, she always somehow came off as annoyingly optimistic as she was in their sophomore year of high school. Nothing in this world could beat Rachel down when she had a goal in sight.

Rachel was the star pupil, always the first one standing in the middle of the stage awaiting directions. Santana knew the girls in the choir mostly disliked their enthusiastic star. She would laugh with them over lunch about it, but in truth, she knew most of it was because most of them were at least five years older than Rachel and herself, yet they were left to sway behind her night after night. Santana could relate to that. She had already done it for the past three years. It was easy to hate Rachel, but the truth was that nobody could actually _hate_ Rachel, because even when she would act like a diva, there was always the underlying truth that Rachel just cared so much about the people around her that she wanted it to go well for everyone.

Rachel would be the first presenting a thank you card if Sydney, one of the choir members, managed to get into a ballet company like she wanted. She lent people her Icy Hot when she saw them rubbing a sore muscle after a particularly long dance rehearsal. If she was running to Starbucks on a break, she never hesitated to offer to bring orders back, even though nobody ever volunteered to go with her and help.

Rachel was better than all of them in more ways than Santana could even imagine.

She rarely defended Rachel to the other girls - it's not like Rachel was her friend anymore these days anyway - but Santana still felt a weird twinge of guilt every time she would think about their nasty comments later as she sat filling ketchup bottles or under the hot spray of her shower as she washed off the residual diner grease before another long day at the theatre.

It was weird to feel guilty about others disliking Rachel when she had spent so much time torturing the girl, which was way worse than anything they were doing. But she knew Rachel now and she saw how her eyes would blink rapidly to keep the tears away when she caught them all giggling behind her back. Rachel might have it all together, but she was still miraculously human.

And it makes Santana feel like shit.

~!~!~!~

Santana doesn't even bother going to sleep on Thursday after her diner shift runs late. Rehearsal starts at 7am on Friday morning so that Rachel and Paolo can have time to get ready for some big schmoozing event all afternoon. The coffee already is making her feel jittery - it's at least her eighth cup in the past 12 hours - but she sips it as she heads for the theatre, the sky still painted in hazy darkness.

She walks by Rachel's dressing room as she heads for the slums that she shares with pretty much the rest of the cast. The door is closed, but Santana can see that it's still dark inside, meaning she actually beat Rachel here for once. It's a first - Rachel is usually at least an hour early for rehearsals so that she can warm up properly - and Santana is tempted to sleep on the plush couch in Rachel's dressing room for a while before people start showing up.

She bypasses the temptation, deciding that her head hurts too much to win a stupid battle with Rachel this morning and heads for her own little cubby to change out of her diner uniform into something more comfortable for rehearsal. She smells like fryer grease and she feels dirty, even in fresh clothes, but she had no choice. There was no way to find time to head all the way back to the loft in order to take a shower before rehearsal. She lathers up in an extra layer of deodorant and runs her fingers through her hair, which feels stringy and flat against her hand.

The other girls filter through a little while later and give her a nod of acknowledgement as they yawn into their own cups of coffee. Santana gives them half-hearted hellos as she laces up her sneakers and trudges out towards the stage.

Rachel is still missing ten minutes before rehearsal and Santana considers texting her to see where she is, before figuring that it'll just make Rachel angry at her for some reason that Santana won't understand.

Five minutes before seven, Rupert shows up with his clipboard full of notes and is too absorbed by them to realize that Rachel isn't pacing around the middle of the stage as she waits for everybody else to be ready.

By the time Rupert finally calls out the scene that they're starting with, Rachel comes running down the aisle from the front of the theatre, her hair still dripping from an obviously rushed shower.

Rupert glances up at her, looking mildly amused at seeing his normally poised star looking disheveled. Rachel starts spewing apologies like she was holding everybody else, even though rehearsal hadn't actually gotten rolling yet. She tugs at her sweatshirt that is hanging off her right shoulder, looking uncomfortable at the chorus of rolling eyes that accompany her apologies.

She drops her bag and cell phone on a seat in the front row and bounds up the stairs on the side of the stage to join the rest of them. Santana almost feels bad for her; she figures Rachel actually managed to oversleep for once in her life, probably due to the crazy PR schedule her team and Rupert have her running on these days.

Santana can barely listen to Rupert with how exhausted she is from her all-nighter, but for some reason, she's had a keen eye on Rachel all day. The girl is dragging in a way that Santana hasn't experienced since Rachel got the flu and still tried to come to school.

It's unsurprising when Rachel misses her cue for the third time and bumps into Santana, who is practicing the same moves next to her. Santana knows she was a half-beat off, but Rachel turned in the completely wrong direction altogether.

"Why are you so damn close to me? How the hell am I going to get this down if you can't even keep your clumsy feet away from me?"

Rachel is lashing out, but Santana still doesn't take well to having the blame put on her. She can feel the stares from the other girls on the two of them, waiting to see how Santana is going to respond.

"Seriously? You've been moving like a broken robot all morning and you really want me to believe it's my fault that you don't know your left from your right?"

Santana crosses her arms over her chest and exhales in a huff, hoping Rachel will just drop it and move on.

Alas, an exhausted Rachel Berry also tends to be an unreasonable Rachel Berry.

Rachel is in her face, though Santana isn't catching a single word of Rachel's crazy diva rant. She digs her fingernails into her own biceps to keep herself from slapping Rachel. This job may be sucking up all her time while paying her next to nothing, but it's a gig that could lead to better opportunities. She's not about to let cranky Rachel ruin it for her.

"ENOUGH!"

Santana whips her head around to see Rupert storming up to the stage from his normal seat. He looks furious. Rupert wasn't exactly the most positive person Santana had ever met, but he never had lost it in a rehearsal before.

"Here we go," Paolo mumbles next to Santana and he stalks off to the left wing to grab his water bottle while Rupert stomps up the stairs until he halts in front of her and Rachel.

Santana misses most of Rupert's rant because she's too focused on how everybody else seems to be shrinking away from them. However, Rachel stands tall and stares Rupert directly in the eyes the entire time. Santana feels instantly teleported to McKinley's choir room with Rachel feuding with Mr. Schuester's latest decision meant to ruin her life.

"It's not my fault that my understudy is incompetent and lazy!" Rachel shrills, shooting Santana daggers.

"Excuse me?" Santana responds darkly, an urge to laugh scratches in her throat at Rachel's absurdity.

"I'm not dealing with petty high school bullshit," Rupert informs them, looking pointedly from Santana to Rachel. "Go spend the day together, paint one another's nails, see a therapist. I don't fucking care what you do. But you'll be here at 6 tomorrow morning ready to act like professionals instead of coddled, spoiled brats."

Santana wants to protest that she didn't even do anything, but Rupert is already bright red with rage and she needs this gig. So when Rachel stomps off the stage, Santana feels no choice but to follow her. She grabs her cell phone and coffee from the wing as they pass, the crowd parting to let them through like Rachel's attitude is contagious. She can already hear the twittering of people talking about the exchange behind her, but she's too annoyed at Rachel to care.

It's barely the normal commuting hour, but midtown is swamped with tourists and business people alike as Santana follows Rachel out onto the street. She stays a few paces behind Rachel as she weaves between a foreign tour group to get to the stairs to the subway.

The platform is moderately crowded and Santana wedges herself between Rachel and a woman in an ill-fitting, hideous red suit and clunky black heels. She chooses to let her shoulder press against the polyester of the woman's blazer instead of Rachel; a little physical space is probably one way to keep Rachel from going completely berserk right here on the platform.

Some guy comes up behind Santana and tries to shove past her, forcing Santana to abandon her intentions to avoid touching Rachel.

She can see the explosion building when her shoulder jostles against Rachel as she tries to steady her balance, scowling at the rude asshole the whole time. New York might be full of people just like her, but that doesn't mean she needs to like it.

"What is your PROBLEM?!" Rachel seethes, her knuckles turning white as she suffocates the strap of her bag with her clenched fingers.

The train pulls up to the platform and Santana lets the people around her push past to board. She can't see Rachel over the heads of the commuters and she doesn't bother getting into the already packed car - she'll just wait for the next one where she won't end up elbow-to-elbow with Rachel.

The doors close and it's not until she turns away from the tracks that she notices Rachel slumped on the wooden bench along the wall, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Against her better judgment, Santana plops down on the seat next to Rachel, a sigh pushing past her lips.

"What's the deal, Rach? You're acting like a complete lunatic."

The comment causes Rachel to scoff, which is quickly followed by a hiccup from her silent sobbing. Santana doesn't understand anything about this morning's events, and she's mad as hell at Rachel for getting them both thrown out of rehearsal. If this were Quinn, she would have already slapped some sense into the girl, but Rachel has always required handling with kid gloves.

She avoids physical contact after seeing how Rachel has reacted to accidentally being bumped twice already today. So instead, she sits quietly and picks at her chipping nail polish, knowing that eventually Rachel will give into her desire to talk about it.

It takes longer than usual; two more trains come and go before Rachel stops sniffling. Santana continues to wait, even though she's stuck sitting on filthy bench surrounded by the muggy, stale air of the subway platform. She's beyond exhausted after work last night and wants to catch up on her sleep. But she waits for Rachel to speak, her head heavy on her shoulders.

"You're single-handedly ruining my career before it's even off the ground."

It's enough to make Santana want to punch something, namely Rachel's beak of a nose, but she manages to breathe in slowly through her nose and holds the air in her lungs as she waits for Rachel to continue.

"I can't have a bad reputation following me around in this cutthroat industry. It's bad enough that I have to pretend to be friends with you for the sake of my public persona, but now I have your old jealousy issues threatening to destroy my credibility as well."

"How is it my fault that you lost your shit after you mess up choreography that we've practiced for weeks?"

"I don't know what you're implying, Santana."

"Maybe I'm not your problem. You've always been your own worst enemy, Berry."

Another train pulls up to the platform, and this time Santana gets on it, leaving Rachel sitting alone in the station.

~!~!~!~

The incessant beeping of her phone alarm is unwelcome, even after six solid hours of sleep. Santana groans and pushes the blanket off of her, forcing herself out of the warmth of her bed before she falls asleep again. It's already starting to get dark outside, but her shift at the diner starts in a little over an hour.

Kurt is sitting at the table eating something that looks like quiche but smells like rabbit food, his tie loosened at the collar after a long day at his internship. Santana pours herself a bowl of Lucky Charms and sits down next to him, nose wrinkling at the smell of whatever it is he's eating.

"It's from the new diet that we're publishing an article about. Isabella is insisting that we all try it out for the week to show active promotion of the company's beliefs," Kurt explains as he pushes around some sprouts on his plate. "Why are you home from rehearsal so early?"

"That bitch Berry got us tossed from rehearsal this morning," Santana grumbles, a scowl permeating her features at the reminder.

"It's not appropriate to go all 'Lima Heights' on people in front of a Broadway director," Kurt chastises, grimacing as he takes another bite of his rabbit food.

"Why do you automatically assume that it's my fault?" Santana spits back, her annoyance bubbling to the surface again. "Rachel is the one who showed up late, messed up very basic choreography, and then went ape shit on me in order to cover up her own mistakes."

Kurt sighs and drops his fork onto his plate and pushing it away from him.

"I know better than anyone that Rachel can be an insufferable diva sometimes, but I know that she's under a ton of pressure with opening day looming and Broadway is her actual career."

"What are you trying to hint at, Kurt?"

"Nothing," he defends. "I just know that Rachel has prepared for this role for her entire life."

"So just because I wasn't singing show tunes in the womb means that Broadway can't be my actual career path?"

She's fully on the defensive now. Kurt has always been Rachel's best friend; Santana had known it was only a matter of time before he took Rachel's side in this feud.

"Santana, that's not what I meant."

"Rachel acts like a spoiled little brat repeatedly, and everybody always just writes it off as ambition. If you want to let her walk all over you, that's your decision. But Funny Girl is helping jumpstart my career too and I'm working damn hard for it, so don't act like she deserves this role just because she wished on a shooting star for it."

She tosses her bowl - soggy, uneaten cereal and all - into the sink and storms out of the kitchen. Her diner uniform is in a crumpled heap next to the bed and she yanks it on anyway, not even attempting to smooth out the creased wrinkles before she's heading out the door.

The diner is unusually busy for the late dinner rush, but it's a welcome distraction from thinking about the day's events. Despite her mood, she manages to be friendly to the annoying tourists and sleazy men - waiting tables is really just acting practice, she's found - and that friendliness earns her a nice pile of tips by her shift's end at daybreak.

She treats herself to a latte from Starbucks on her way to the subway station with the wad of cash she earned. The afternoon nap did wonders for her building exhaustion, and for once Santana has it in her to enjoy how peaceful New York can be in the early morning hours.

Rehearsal isn't for a few hours still, but she figures she can make up for yesterday's lost rehearsal time before everybody else shows up.

It's the second day in a row that she's the first person to arrive. Fuck Kurt if he doesn't think she's as committed to this show as Rachel is. Hell, she doesn't even get paid half of Rachel's salary, and there's a 99% chance that she'll never actually get to perform for an audience.

Somehow, it's still worth it when she looks out from the stage at the hundreds of empty, velvet seats. Sure, in high school she never pictured herself in this setting. Her dreams always involved huge concert venues and much sluttier costumes with tons of hot women dancing around her.

So what if this was Rachel's dream first? That doesn't mean that it can't be hers too.

She sticks her ear buds in and presses play on her iPhone until the opening chords of the number start pounding through her. Her feet take over and she moves through the choreography, counting the beats in her head like Brittany had trained her to do in glee club rehearsal.

She is Fanny Brice, if only for a moment on that empty stage with nobody watching. She transforms through her movements in a way that is exhilarating. Nobody can take this away from her. She's an understudy to a girl that has overshadowed her every single day since she joined glee club four years ago. Rachel might get all of the glory, but Santana can feel that this role is just the beginning for her.

Her bones ache with want for her name in lights on the marquee, her heart twists with desire for a role that feels like it was written for her. Deep down, she's that scared little girl who would sit on her abuela's floor in the tiny Lima Heights Adjacent apartment and listen to stories about life in Mexico, how her abuela's parents came to America so that their children could have a better life.

Her father was a doctor and made her abuela proud every day. Her aunt settled down with a wealthy lawyer and had a family of rowdy boys. Santana was the only granddaughter, the one child that her abuela always put all of her hopes and dreams into.

She had already let her abuela down in a way that she could never make up for.

But on a stage, under the bright lights of Broadway, she can feel her abuela's warm embrace after her elementary school dance recital. She can taste the celebratory ice cream they shared when she made the Cheerios as a freshman. And even if her abuela never forgives her and never comes to see her perform, Santana knows that her abuela will never stop caring that her granddaughter is following her dreams at all costs.

Santana is out of breath by the time she notices that others have started to show up for rehearsal and she wipes her sweaty brow with the hem of her t-shirt before joining her friends where they are drinking their coffee. They're all huddled around someone's phone, giggling and passing it around so everybody can get a better look.

"What's so funny?" Santana asks them, leaning over one of the girl's shoulder to try and catch a glimpse.

"You've got to see this," Bailey sniggers, handing the phone over to Santana.

Santana nearly drops the phone when she sees the headline.

**James Franco slums with another young Broadway hopeful**

There's a picture of Franco wrapped around a petite brunette with unmistakable features situated below the headline. Rachel Berry is on the front page of Perez Hilton's blog, looking sloppy and drunk, her hand tucked playfully into the back pocket of James Franco's designer jeans.


End file.
